#wiggington

^ This man makes love to you in the sweetest, gentlest, most tender and loving way possible

if TRUST has left you fallin’, in nobody’s arms 

So the Phillies lost.  Again.  I've heard enough whip-cracking at them for how bad they've been doing this season, and I'm getting progressively more tired of their own people accusing them of being "losers" and slacking likewise.  I always remind them and myself that every team in MLB history has most likely had their bad years, and how difficult it is to really go all the way (especailly when two or more of your stars are on the bench for injury), and if they don't pick it up this season, there's always the seasons to follow.  However, I'm going to take a moment after witnessing this game's events to compile my thoughts, and hopefully my observations will make sense.

There's a certain repetitive sequence to which the Phillies are continuously losing the chops that they usually have at the start of the game:

Beginning, they have a good lead, pitcher is doing okay or good.  Should be a pretty easy win if they keep it up.

About the fourth to sixth inning, we make some stupid mistake and the other team consequently ends up tying up or taking the lead.

The game goes on, score is close, but Phills are simply unable to pick themselves back up off the ground.

/Endgame.  They lost.

Being a participant in the sport myself, and being on a team with a lot of rookies-- heretofore, our skills not of the greatest standards--I probably can relate to how our Philladelphia team feels right now.  Kind of like you feel like you're doing the best you can, but you just can't do it as right as you would like.  Every new game, you walk in with a new hope that this will be the one, that this will be special, but it's a huge dissapointment when your teammates don't perform that well, and the other team gradually starts to loom over you more and more like a tower.  Eventually, one things happens after another, and the team starts to lose hope.  You're focusing on how bad the other players are doing, so you are sufficiently distracted enough to not perform well yourself, and it all falls down as if it were a line of dominoes. All of this negatively affects the over all productivity of the athletes, both individually and as a unit.

The problem seems to be our offense.  Maybe it's because some of our more aggresive players, like Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, are absent due to injurry (not to mention, we just lost the hard-working Galvis). Although it's arguable, the void of those key players changes the team's chemestry.  Makes them play less hard.  Thank the Heavens Almighty that Chooch's bad slide into second base didn't severely hurt him earlier today, or we would be crispy toast.

In any event, our batting is bad, and it's undeniable.  We get three outs all too quickly; particularly the perpetually ominous "1-2-3's" that have been occuring on a basis that is far too regular.  I'm almost getting the impression--and this goes back to out missing superstars--that everybody is trying to fill the gap by playing Hero, by thinking that they can hit a homerun every time.  It only leads to the over-swinging, always hitting the balls to the outfeild in locations that are unacceptably playable for the opposing outfeilders.  They get under the high-pops and hardly even look as the projectile slips into their gloves like they were catching a feather.  We're always giving away our wins.  It doesn't get any more complex than that.

If we don't over-swing, we under-swing, or try to bunt at stupid times.  The only successful bunt I can immediately recall that happened recently was Vance Worley's a couple of games ago, and I don't believe we even got the lead runner to home plate.  Even today, one of the Phills tried to bunt with no baserunners.  I understand that there are certain reasonings behind this strategy, but it always seemed dumb to me.  I was never, ever a fan of bunting unless there was at least a runner on first base.  If it's not a bunt, then it's a pitiful ground ball or a drive (using that term extremely, extremely loosely) to the shallow in feild, and we all know how that goes.  The in-field "up's" speak for themselves.

Simply put, stepping up to home plate with a bat is more menacing, lately, than it should be.  Thanks to Wiggington, Rollins, Victerino, Pence, and Chooch, we've been able to get some runs and a couple of homeruns even, but it doesn't supply for the substandard offense that we've been seeing.  We can hit a few to the audience, a score like that is always welcome obviously, but our players, particularly the previously mentioned (maybe with an exception of Chooch, who's been able to score a few admirable singles and doubles), are trying to be the heroic help we so desperately need, and the only way they know how to do it is to continuously try and hit to the green with high pops.  They know if they hit it hard enough, they'll get a homerun.  They abuse that slim possiblity much more than they should, and should concentrate more vigorously on hitting the ball squarely so that he can get a few good drives that'll actually get past the infeilders and aren't too freaking easy for the outfeilders to catch.

Our defense, amusingly, seems to be fine.  Although we make some mistakes that should not have been made (i.e., Wiggington dropping an infield catch and Pence failing to obtain that high pop in today's game), our players show their awesome agressive nature when they're playing out in the feild.  Galvis's fractured spine pretty much proves that if nothing else does, and even Hunter, who irked me to depths today with not catching that last hit, has done some pretty good fielding since the spring training.  Luna and Pierre, of course, are always stars when it comes to managing their position.

I don't know if it's their attitudes or what, but after the opposers catch up to them, they start dropping like the plague hit them.  Almost as though they think it's a bust if they don't pull themselves back up to par.  They give up.  And you can tell that they get frustrated, esepcailly with the ones that are more verbose in terms of their body language.  I can only imagine how flamingly angry Chase--the Phill who's all about winning--is right now, after we've come to face with so many bad losses.  He can't wait to get back up to plate.

All in all, we all have different opinions as to why our boys aren't up to the standards, but I attribute it mostly to our offense which lends to the absence of our leaders.  Pitching, despite its occasional bad spells, is ranging from okay to perfectly fine, and defense is like that, too.  We can throw, we can catch, we can spot, and we've had a lot of close calls with getting the runners out from first base to home, but nothing needs work more than the batting.  I think that our Phillies might be lacking a bit of guidance, and perhaps some are a little too cocky to perform as well as they would if they kept their ducks in a row.  

The bottom line is, we're losing, and it's always by merely one stupid little run, or more precisely, one stupid little mistake.  And those stupid little things only lead to more stupid little things, and those stupid little things equal losses.  It was almost luck that we won against Boston a couple games ago.  Although we had a huge lead, the latter nearly gave us a good slap in the ego by catching up to us so closely.  I can't help but think that if it were Boston that had that six-run lead, we would never have been able to catch up to them.

The scores are always close.  Twice, have we lost in an extra inning.  Twice.  In a row.  We're always close, but the opposers always pull ahead. We need to keep our heads on straighter, and maybe tighter so our brains'll stop falling out.  Maybe I'm making playing offense way simpler than it really is, but heck, these are just my evaluations, and I can at least attribute them to my own experience with a bat and a ball.  It's true that hitting well is an ambitious feat, but these are the major leagues, and our players, who have the potential to be great, need to pick it up and realize whatever mistakes they're making.  There are no excuses.